Mikaela Shiffrin isn’t the only one on her team making history.
Shiffrin’s personal head coach, Karin Harjo, will become the first woman to set a giant slalom course on the World Cup circuit, doing so for Saturday’s first run in Are, Sweden. Harjo also was the first woman to set a World Cup slalom course, back in 2016.
“Milestones like these are something to highlight and celebrate. But progress is when it’s just another day and we’re all doing our jobs and it doesn’t matter what gender someone is,” Harjo told USA TODAY Sports.
How a course is set is a big deal in ski racing because it determines its profile: where the gates are and how they’re spaced, for example, or whether a course is straighter or more winding. In a sport where results are often decided by tenths or hundredths of a second, your coach setting the course can be a significant advantage because he or she will do it based on your strengths and preferences.
If someone is a better glider, for example, you can put more space between gates. If someone is technically precise, set a course with quick, tight turns.
“You’re always thinking what types of things (your athlete) likes to see. That can highlight Mikaela’s strengths over others,” Harjo said. “We train and work together every day, so I know what characteristics she likes and can work that into the course set.”
Because it does offer an advantage, course-setting assignments are divvied up among the many national teams. Based on their results the previous season, countries will be able to set as many as three courses in each discipline.
The United States got three slalom sets this season and two in GS. Harjo was initially supposed to set a slalom course, but it occurred during the two months Shiffrin missed after a serious crash during a GS in Killington, Vermont.
But that turned out to be serendipitous, because Harjo’s course set will now occur on International Women’s Day.
“Awareness is change,” Harjo said. “Having an amazing celebration like that in the calendar year is incredible in itself. If timed with other moments like this, that awareness is something that can inspire and also help to create opportunities for other people that are looking to pursue coaching. Or pursue anything.”
As in many sports, men make up the majority of coaches and support staff at the elite level. When Harjo set her first course nine years ago, she was the only woman coach on the World Cup circuit in the tech disciplines of slalom and GS.
Harjo said she’s not sure why the sport has been so male-dominated. Part of it is probably cultural. But the vagabond life of ski racing, with athletes, coaches and staff spending most of the year on the road and having to move to a new location each week during the season, can pose an added challenge for women who want to have families.
“I wouldn’t call it a barrier,” Harjo said. “But it’s something that, right now, it’s not conducive.”
It was the same in soccer not long ago. Now Emma Hayes has the most high-profile job in the world as the U.S. women’s national team coach while also being a single mother to 6-year-old Harry.
“That’s something I look at it and say, ‘That’s really cool,’ ‘ Harjo said.
But there have to be those firsts, so other women have someone to look up to.
Harjo and Shiffrin had worked together when Harjo was an assistant on the U.S. team. When Shiffrin made Harjo her head coach ahead of last season — hiring her away from Canada, where Harjo was only the second woman ever to be head coach of a national team — she did it because of Harjo’s skills, but also to put a spotlight on women in the sport.
And when you’re with Shiffrin, whose 100 World Cup wins are more than any other skier, male or female, there’s going to be a spotlight.
“Sometimes there’s this unspoken question. Not something bad, but people will go, ‘Can she do it?’ It’s not about gender necessarily. But it does answer that question, yes, we can do it,” Harjo said.
“Then it becomes a norm. Then you have other women coming in to lead teams, whether it’s for a discipline or a country. And that change becomes the norm.”
Harjo is already seeing it happen. Two other women have set slalom courses since she did it in 2016. There are more women coaches on the World Cup circuit.
And on Saturday, as broadcasters note it was Shiffrin’s coach who set the first run of the GS course, fans worldwide will hear Harjo’s name.
Most won’t recognize the significance, but some will. And maybe, just maybe, there’ll be a little girl or young woman who will hear it and think, “I can do that someday.”
“It just creates that change. That’s what it’s all about,” Harjo said. “And, hopefully, inspires somebody to want to do the same.”
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
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